Taking Pride in Voter Registration by Janet Singer, CGB Political Director
I'm frequently guilty of talking more about the odds than about the stakes of the 2024 election. The sight of Trump in action on CNN last week (I admit I had to take frequent breaks from the avalanche of lies and vitriol) was a jolting reminder of the stakes and the need for us to get to work now.
Most Americans think that the work of elections happens sometime after Labor Day 2024. On the contrary, it is really a year-round activity and a campaign can be won by work performed during the odd years: raising money, defining the candidates with effective messaging, fighting voter suppression efforts, building the campaign team, and--crucially for Democrats– registering young voters.
Because we depend on a robust youth vote, we need to register everyone who was not old enough to vote in the midterms but who will be eighteen by November, 2024. If we don’t turn the newly eligible into registered voters, we simply can’t win.
Though we always hear about the low voting rates in our country–67% of eligible voters turned out in 2020–the turnout rate among registered voters in 2020 was 92%. If we can register people to vote, they are very likely to vote.
Crimson Goes Blue is planning to register voters at Pride events in critical districts and we need your help. Specifically, we are recruiting members for events in these cities:
Tucson and Phoenix, AZ
Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA
Atlanta, GA
Detroit and Grosse Pointe, MI
Freeport, Greenport, Huntington, Long Beach, Northport, Nyack, Patchogue, and Syracuse, NY
Raleigh, NC
Doylestown, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, PA
Virginia Beach, VA
Cincinnati, OH
Reno and Las Vegas, NV
Milwaukee, WI
If you would like to participate in any of these voter registration events, please sign up using this form. Our partners at Field Team 6 have all the information you need to do voter registration in their handy state-by-state “Voter Drive in a Box” and we will provide training at the events for anyone new to voter registration.
It’s easy and fun and you get to watch the Pride parade at the same time!
As we get closer to the election, we’ll need to address the reasons why registered voters don’t vote–the most common being that they are too busy or have conflicting work or school schedules, followed by the belief that their vote doesn’t make a difference. We will also need to help voters vote in areas where Republicans have worked hard to make voting difficult. But, for now, let’s all commit to getting some new Democrats in key districts onto the rolls.
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